Hurts Me Too
by Mrs. Crocodile
Summary: After surviving Sylar's attack, Elle picks up the pieces of her life and tries to move on.
1. Prologue

**Author's Note: **I'm not really sure what that title means, except that Sylar has hurt Mohinder too. (And that it's an awesome Grateful Dead song.) So the purpose of this prologue-ish thing is to set up what is different, which is not much. I was going to put this off for a while, but I told myself that if there was no Mohinder again, I would start this. And there was no Mohinder again last night! I didn't think that was going to happen. But since I still have a blank slate on his Vol. 5, I have to take advantage of that.

Disclaimer (for the entire story): I do not own Heroes. No money is being made off of this story. Please don't sue me.

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**Hurts Me Too**

Summary: After surviving Sylar's attack, Elle picked up the pieces of her life and tried to move on.

Spoilers Through: TBA, but so far 04x06--Strange Attractors (Although it goes AU before that, and there are no spoilers, so... We're just going to see where the Sylar storyline goes.)

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**Prologue:**

Halfway across, Sylar stopped cutting into Elle head, exhaling deeply. He looked down at her face, at the blood starting to trickle out of the wound on her head. When she did not move or open her eyes, he knew that she had fallen unconscious, but he could also tell that she was not yet dead. She would be soon enough. Sylar could have continued, made it final, but he pushed himself up to his feet. He did not want to do this.

He wanted her out of his life. She had done nothing but make a mess of his life. He thought he could get past that. During the eclipse, he had been so sure that they already were, but everything changed when his powers came back. It was as though a piece of him had returned, the piece that could not and did not want to change. The piece that was not willing to forgive and forget. So he wanted her and her lies and manipulations gone. He just did not want to kill her.

Looking down at her now, he could see that for all intents and purposes, she was already dead; he had already killed her. That knowledge did not bother him at all, but he could not bring himself to go any further with it. He turned away from her and walked up the beach. This was as final as he needed it to be. He did not need to watch the life leave her, did not need to see her draw her final breath.

On some level, he knew that he was relying on that slight, microscopic possibility that she could survive this. Knowing that he left her that fighting chance, that he had left it up to fate, would relieve some of that guilt that he told himself he did not feel.

–

After that, Elle had vague memories of doctors and being told that something had happened, someone had found her. She floated in and out of consciousness. And then one day, she was told it was about a month after the "attack," she woke for good. The police showed up in her hospital room, asking questions that she did not want to answer. The doctor told her that retrograde amnesia was common with these types of injuries, and she relied on that to avoid the questions. But she did remember. Even if she hadn't, it would have been easy for her to identify her attacker just from the scar on her forehead.

After another month, she was strong enough to leave the hospital. The wounds had heal enough; the doctors were ready to discharge her. Before she could leave this white prison, however, the government came to take her away.

The next thing she knew, she was waking up in a large, cold room. There was some kind of box sitting on her chest, and her nose hurt from having something shoved up it. She lifted her head groggily and saw rows of metal beds filled with people in a similar position.

She turned her head to the other side and found Mohinder Suresh holding a tube connected to her chest box. "Welcome back," he said.

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**Author's Note:** Fair warning. This is a triangle fic, but it's not my usual triangle, so that's fun. I've also never written about Mohinder, also fun. Everything I write in this fandom is a variation on a theme, but this is a little more varied. So hopefully that works.


	2. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: **The first few chapters are a little short (okay, really short) because I want to see how much I can get established before the new episode airs. Because he has to be coming back soon, right? Thanks to everyone who's already reviewed!

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**Chapter 1**

Elle rubbed her face, pinching her nose hard. She tried to sit up, but she still had that thing on her chest. Mohinder pulled it off, tossing it on the floor, and took her arm to help her up.

"Where are we?" she asked.

Mohinder pulled her up to her feet and put his arm around her shoulder to help her stand. "I'll explain in a minute, but we have to get out of here."

Elle was going to tell him that she did not need help walking, but as soon as she took a step, her legs gave out under her. Mohinder caught her and picked her up completely, like she did not weigh anything. "We don't have time for this."

As he carried her up the stairs, Elle marveled at how strong he was. She never would have guessed that he possessed this kind of strength. Climbing the stairs with her in tow, he did not even struggle. At the top, he set her down, and Elle tried out her legs again. "I was in the hospital for a couple months, so I guess--"

Mohinder craned his head to look down the next hallway. "You've probably been in here for a couple months," he interrupted without looking at her.

She let that sink in. "Right, so I guess my muscles are a little weak." He darted out, and Elle hurried clumsily to follow him. "You said you'd tell me what's going on."

He sighed and turned around to look at her. His eyes settled on her forehead. Elle instinctively raised her hand to feel the scar. "I see you're admiring my souvenir from Sylar."

Mohinder shook his head like he was trying not to stare. "It looks like you were luckier than most."

"I guess," Elle said, but she was not sure if he heard her because he had started jogging down the hall again. She tried to chase after him, but her legs gave out again in protest. She hit the floor face first. Another woman ran by, almost stepping on Elle.

Mohinder came back for her, picking her up off the floor and carrying her again. Feeling stupid, Elle put her arms around his neck for balance. "You know, when we first met, you were the one with the broken nose. I guess everything has come full circle."

He glanced at her face. "It's not broken."

He navigated the halls in a way that suggested he was familiar with the building. Juggling her weight like it was nothing, he pushed open a heavy metal door with one hand. The light that came through the open door was so bright Elle felt like she had been blinded. She turned her head into Mohinder's chest to shield her eyes, and it took her a second to realize this was just the daylight. The sun seemed so much brighter than she ever remembered it being.

She heard the door slam behind them, and then Mohinder just stopped. Elle forced herself to open her eyes so that she could see what the trouble was. They were in a city, but it did not look like New York. The people on the sidewalks were frozen in place, mid-stride. "Where are we?"

Mohinder set her down on her shaky legs. "Washington. There's government program that's rounding up evolved humans." He started to back away from her. "Hide," he said before turning around and walking off.

Taking careful, deliberate steps, Elle tried to catch up to him. "Where am I supposed to go? I don't even know what month it is." He ignored her. "What do you have to do with this? Do you work for them?"

He turned around. "What? No!"

She did not realize that would offend him. "I don't know. Just seems like something you'd do. It's kind of your field " She deliberately left off the part about his easily changing loyalties when he worked for her father. "Why were you there then?"

"Because..." He started walking again. "Stop following me."

"I'm not following you," she blatantly lied. "Maybe I'm just also going in this direction."

Mohinder headed back the way they came. "Fine. Then I'll go in this direction."

She caught his arm as he passed her. "Mohinder," she whined. She was at a loss for what she could say. There were so many things she was still confused about. "I need help. Isn't that what you've been trying to do since you came here, help people like me?"

He narrowed his eyes at her as the people on the sidewalk and the cars on the street began to move again. Elle's orange jumpsuit earned her sideways looks from the passers-by. Mohinder noticed this and sighed, pulling her along with him. "You need new clothes."


	3. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

As they walked quickly down the sidewalk, Mohinder felt his pockets and finally pulled out his wallet. He seemed surprised to find it was still there. Elle started to put things together in her mind. "You're hiding too," she observed. On some level, she already knew that or she would not be following after him. It was just sinking in that there were only a few reasons why he would need to hide and why he would think his wallet might be gone.

Mohinder did not respond to this. He just looked through his wallet sadly, like he already knew that he did not have much money. He glanced back at her. "You won't get far looking like an escaped felon, so we'll find some kind of thrift shop, and then we are spliting up."

Elle disagreed about that last part, but she would deal with it after they found the thrift store. "But if Nakamura's back there, freezing time, why don't we just go back and get his help."

He did not even slow down to consider this idea. "If you want to go back to the facility where you were just held prisoner, be my guest. But this is not the first time I've escaped from that building. I'm not going back again."

Elle thought maybe the reason he kept getting caught was that he did not utilize useful people. For a second, Elle consider turning back on her own. She was not sure if Mohinder was really the person she wanted to be following. She walked along with him while she tried to assess what her options really were.

When Elle saw Peter coming down the sidewalk toward them, she felt relieved. Then she remembered that Arthur had stripped him of his abilities. Claire was with him, and when she saw Elle, she stopped for a second with a sour look on her face. It did not surprise Elle that their brief attempt at friendship was over after what happened the day of the eclipse.

Peter walked up to Mohinder, barely acknowledging Elle's presence. "We're looking for Nathan. Have you seen him?"

Mohinder shook his head. "No."

Claire was shooting daggers at Elle with her eyes. "I heard you were dead."

It sounded like she was mad to find out it was not true. "Well, you heard wrong. It was a close call though."

Her eyes flicked up to Elle's forehead. "Yeah. What did you do to get him to turn on you?"

Elle did not want to get into what exactly her relationship with Sylar was. First of all, she was not entirely sure herself, but more importantly, the less Peter and Mohinder knew about that, the better it would be for her. She tried to find a way to either answer without giving anything away or avoid the question without making it look like she was trying to hide something.

Before Elle could come up with anything, Peter took Claire by the arm. "That doesn't matter right now. We need to find Nathan."

Claire glared at Elle as she let Peter pulled her away. They had only gone a few feet when Peter's phone rang. He stopped to answer it, giving Claire more time to glare. He nodded his head and then covered the mouthpiece. "He's back at the hotel."

Elle decided that she was still really confused. He said that to everyone, not just Claire, like they should all care about his brother, who, now that she thought about it, worked in the government and had tried to exposed them before. She turned to Mohinder. "So do people know about us now?"

"No," he whispered back. "It's just a select few at the Department of Homeland Security."

Peter listened for a little while longer, and then he hung up. "Okay, it turns out Nathan was at the hotel the whole time. Sylar had locked him in a closet or something. He's going to go downstairs and talk with the President, and we're going to meet up with all of them there."

"What about Sylar?" Claire asked.

"Your dad took care of it. Sylar's dead."

Elle tried not to react to this news at all as Claire turned her eyes to her. Honestly, she did not know what to feel. It had to be done. It was for the best. Objectively, she was glad that Sylar was finally dead, and she hoped he would stay that way. Her subjective feelings were far more complicated. On the one hand, she hated him and wished she could have been the one to drive whatever it was into his head. On the other hand, she still hated him, but she wished there was a way she could have undone everything she did to him and maybe gotten the man she did not hate back. Either way, no matter how she looked at it, she wanted Sylar gone, dead, buried.

Peter turned to Mohinder. "Do you want to come with us?"

Elle assumed that invitation was only being extended to Mohinder, but Claire assumed the opposite. She was incredulous. "Do you really trust her? The last time I saw her, she was working with _Sylar."_

All eyes were on Elle. Peter seemed somewhat familiar with the situation, but it was news to Mohinder. Elle just pointed at her forehead. "He tried to kill me!"

Claire took a menacing step toward Elle. "If he really wanted to kill you, you'd be dead."

"Okay, calm down," Peter interjected, putting himself between the two women. "I've seen him fail to kill her before, at Primatech. She knocked him out with her electricity."

Elle did not remember much of what happened after Sylar started cutting, but she did not think it had gone down the way it had at Primatech. She did not know why he didn't finish the job, and now she would never know. For the month that she was awake in the hospital, the only explanation she could come up with was that he simply did not care. She did not matter enough to make sure it was done, and he did not see her as any kind of threat for retaliatory purposes. He did not kill her because she was nothing to him, just damaged goods to be left on a beach to rot. She let Peter's explanation stand because she did not want to explain any of that to the people she was with. "You were at Primatech then?"

Peter shrugged. "It's a long story."

"No, I remember now," she said. It was all coming back to her. "When Jesse went crazy and starting pounding on the glass, ranting that he did not belong there. He said he was Peter Petrelli. Huh. I guess he wasn't crazy after all. Wait, does that mean that you robbed a bank?"

That question seemed to make Peter uncomfortable. "The point is, based on that scar, I'm sure he was really trying to kill her."

It did not make a difference to Claire. "You still can't trust her."

Mohinder appeared to also see the need to prevent an imminent catfight. "Why don't you two go ahead? I'll catch up later."

Peter eyed Claire's clenched jaw. "Yeah, that's probably a good idea." He told Mohinder the name of the hotel and handed him his phone. "You can call me on Claire's number when you're ready." Peter took Claire by the shoulders and steered her in the direction of the hotel, "Let's go."

Elle watched them leave, and then she turned to Mohinder. "You are not seriously thinking of abandoning me here." She pulled at her jumpsuit. "In this."

Mohinder shook his head. "That depends on what happened between you and Sylar. What was she talking about?"

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	4. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

Elle knew exactly what she was going to say about what happened with her and Sylar, and it would be technically true. She was just going to leave out some of the personal details that were not entirely pertinent. "Arthur sent us to get Claire because... because _you_ needed the catalyst. And if you remember, you and I also teamed up once to get Claire. Because _you_ needed her blood," she said, making that connection right then. Actually, Elle had been there to kill Bennet, but she hoped Mohinder would not quibble on that point. "And that's all it was. It was no different than what we did. Until he decided to kill me."

Mohinder seemed unsure about whether he should believe her or not, and Elle decided this was a good time to change the subject. Remembering the catalyst, she got the final piece in the puzzle of Mohinder's involvement. "But it worked, right? The formula's out there. That's what happened to you."

That effectively distracted him. He started walking again. "You still need new clothes."

She jogged a little to catch up to him, wishing that he had given her some warning. "Just admit it. You completed the formula, and you took it. That's why you need to hide now and that's where your sudden strength came from. You're one of us now." She looked around at the Washington government buildings. "Bad timing."

He stopped abruptly. Elle wished he would quit it with all the starting and stopping. She hoped he knew it was possible to walk and talk at the same time. "Yes, there was a formula," he said. "But it's all been destroyed now. And it can never be again because Arthur had the catalyst, and Sylar killed him. And I didn't—I didn't take it on purpose. I just got caught up in it during the destruction."

Elle wondered why he was so defensive about it. She was just asking if he had an ability now; she was not attacking him. She supposed the fact that Sylar killed Arthur was interesting, but why would she care if there was a formula out there? She already had an ability. Suddenly she got paranoid that maybe she did not anymore. Maybe the government found a way to take them with their chest boxes. Unlike Mohinder, she had not escaped multiple times, she was just there, at their mercy. She raised her hand nervously and took a deep breath. Then she cupped it and attempted to create a ball of electricity with her hand. She breathed a sigh of relief when it worked.

Mohinder pushed her hand down. "Stop that!" The pain of the shock he suffered caused him to shake his own hand and suck in his breath through his teeth. He examined his hand briefly. "You don't want to draw any more attention to yourself."

Elle took off walking. "I just wanted to make sure everything was working properly. It would be embarrassing if I need to protect myself and I could only give off sparks. So let's find some cheap clothes, and then we can meet up with the others."

She waited to see if he protested or renewed his assertion that they would split up when she had clothes that did not make her look like a criminal. He did not. Elle figured that was a good sign.

They had another problem, which was that the neighborhood they were in did not have many stores, and none of them looked cheap. If anything, the neighborhood seemed to be getting more upscale, and the sun was starting to set. They could not keep walking aimlessly like this. They needed a plan. "Can I see the cell phone?""

"Why?" he asked warily.

"To call Information. Get some idea where we're going."

Mohinder looked embarrassed that he had not thought of that. He got the phone out of his pocket. "I'll make the call."

–

An hour later, it was mostly dark out, and Elle was standing outside a Goodwill, waiting for Mohinder. She understood why he thought she should stay outside. They were fortunate that no one had called the police on them thus far, and a woman in an orange jumpsuit buying ugly, cheap clothes would be pretty suspicious. Still, she had this paranoid feeling that this could all be an elaborate ruse for Mohinder to be able to get away from her without her noticing.

So she was really happy when she saw him coming out, carrying a plastic bag. He handed over to her, saying, "You owe me twelve dollars."

Elle had not checked her bank account recently, but she was sure that she was good for it. She found it unlikely that she would actually pay him back though. Maybe she could use the fact that she owed him money to keep him from leaving her behind. She pulled the clothes out of the bag to inspect them. They were not that bad, just a plain t-shirt and gray sweatpants. She went deeper into the space between two buildings. "Turn around."

Mohinder looked around. "You're going to change here?"

"You wanted me to stop drawing attention to myself. So the sooner I change, the better." She knew that stripping down in the middle of the city would probably draw attention to her, but she was sure that she could be quick. She started to unzip the jumpsuit, not even caring if Mohinder was going to turn around.

When he realized that she was serious about this, he quickly averted his eyes. He walked out to the street to act as a lookout. It took Elle less than thirty seconds to get out of her jumpsuit and into her new clothes. The pants were a little baggy, and the clothes smelled a little, but it felt so good to leave the evidence of her imprisonment behind. She went out to meet him. "So now we can find the others, right?"

Elle expected him to say no. During the long pause he took, she waited, expecting him to tell her that now, they split up, and she really doubted the promise of twelve dollars was going to change his mind. Instead of saying any of that though, he pulled out Peter's phone. "Yeah, maybe you'll find someone else to follow around."

She did not know exactly who the others were, other than Peter, Claire, Bennet, and Nathan, but she could not think of any person who could possibly be with them who would be nicer to her than Mohinder had been. It sunk in right then how alone she really was. She had mostly been alone since her father was killed, but it was just so much more pronounced now. She let Mohinder make the call, not saying anything to encourage or discourage this idea that by taking her with him, he would somehow be able to get rid of her. She would just keep taking it one step at a time.

Mohinder hung up the phone. "They're all going to dispose of Sylar's body. Bennet's going to pick us up in a few minutes."

Elle sighed. Why did it have to be Bennet of all people? "He's going to try to kill me."

For a just a moment, it looked like Mohinder thought she was overreacting, but then he seemed to realize that he did not have enough information to make that call. "What did you and Sylar do?" he asked accusingly.

"We did our job." She knew that was not going to be enough for him this time. "We tried to take his little girl. We went into his home, held his wife hostage. At one point I think I shot Claire." She was jumbling up the facts on purpose to make it sound more fluid, to eliminate anything about the time she and Sylar spent alone together. "But, god, you know I had just been fired from the Company. Arthur had given me a place to stay and helped fix some problems I'd been having. How could I say no to him?" That was a more unabashed misrepresentation of what happened. "Did he say _us,_ or did he just say that he's going to pick you up? Does he know that I'm with you?"

"Yeah, I just told him."

Elle realized that she knew that. She was listening to the conversation; she heard him say that she was with him. "Okay, I guess that's better than surprising him with it."

"You know, Elle, Bennet's not really such a bad guy." Mohinder put his hand on her shoulder. "He's forgiven me for a lot. Just a few weeks ago, Matt, Peter, and I kidnapped him, drugged him, and invaded his memories. I _killed_ him once. He's always managed to forgive me."

He was so naïve. "You would think he'd understand, right? I mean, he's done the job for so long, but..." Elle needed to decide whether she should take a chance on going out on her own, with a government program hunting them down, or whether she should take the chance that Mohinder was right about Bennet's capacity for forgiveness. "But that's really not been my experience with him."

A car pulled up to the curb, and Elle realized that she had run out of time to decide. She prepared to defend herself if it came to that. She had not come this far just to die now, by Bennet's hand. _You survived Sylar_, she reminded herself. _Twice._ Bennet rolled down the passenger's side window. Looking right at Elle, he said, "Get in the back and don't say a word."

So far, so good. Mohinder gave her a sympathetic look as he got into the front seat. Elle hurried to get into the car too, lest Bennet drive off without her. Thinking about the way Mohinder looked like he actually felt sorry that she was being treated badly, she remembered the circumstances of when Mohinder had killed Bennet. It was to save her, and himself and all of them, but partly for her. There was not going to be anyone at Sylar's disposal party who would be better for her than Mohinder. He would be so easy to use. A nice, naïve man who understood what it was like to make mistakes.

On the long, mostly silent ride out of the city, Elle made a decision. She did not want to be the person she used to be. She did not want to be manipulative and sadistic. She did not want her life to be characterized only by the people she hurt and the bodies she left behind.

When they stopped in the rural wooded area, Sylar's body was already on the unlit funeral pyre. Bennet told her not to go near him, because he did not trust her, but Elle ignored that. She needed to see him, to know that it was real. In death, he did not look like Sylar. She had not been expecting that. She had not even realized that she would be forced to face Gabriel's death at the same time. As she looked at him, she thought about how he would be remembered, about how his funeral was being attended only by the people who hated him the most. Her resolve was set. She had a second chance, and she was not going to end up like this.

Bennet forcibly moved her away from the body, so that he could light it on fire. She sat down on a large rock away from the group. In addition to the people she knew about, there was also Matt Parkman, Hiro Nakamura, who was the reason she was on that beach with Sylar, some other Japanese guy, and Angela Petrelli. Angela looked on Elle with a fair bit of disdain.

As the flames engulfing Sylar died down, the others talked, and Elle just watched, because no one wanted to talk to her. Eventually, Mohinder came over. "You don't seem to be very popular."

"Yeah." She smiled wryly. "Listen, you don't have to worry. I'm not going to follow you anymore. You've done enough. Thank you." As an afterthought, she added, "Oh, and I'll make sure you get that twelve dollars."

Mohinder was a little taken aback by her sudden change in attitude. "Well, I wanted to let you know that Nathan talked to the President, and he's shutting down the program. They're going to revamp it, figure out something else, but it's... There's not going to be anyone hunting us anymore."

"That's great news. Thanks for telling me." She expected that to be it. She thought Mohinder would back to his friends and leave this annoying clinger-on behind once and for all.

He sat down next to her. "So where are you going to go now?"

Elle shrugged. "I really hadn't thought that far ahead. I... I guess I'll go back to New York." She looked back at Angela. She knew that her job at the Company was still gone. "I don't know; maybe I'll finally become a waitress." She knew Mohinder would not know the significance of that job to her, but it did not matter. "I'll be fine."

She was trying to be convincing, but it seemed to have the opposite effect on Mohinder. "Well, actually, I'm going to New York as well, so I guess you could tag along for a little while longer. I was actually thinking about it, and I think you father owned the loft I live in, which means that you probably own it, so... If you needed a place to stay just until you get on your feet, I couldn't really tell you no."

Elle had not been expecting that at all. She had just decided to leave Mohinder alone, and here he was offering her a place to stay. "The Company owns your loft." She knew that he was really offering just to be nice, but she wanted him to understand that he could tell her no.

Mohinder sort of smiled. "Yeah, but who was financing the Company?"

She could tell that he was not really looking to be let off the hook. "I really could use a couch to crash on. Just until I get back on my feet. So I guess I'll go to New York with you. Thanks."

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**Author's Note: **Wow, that was like a real chapter, lengthwise.


	5. Chapter 4

**Author's Note: **There was more I wanted to get done before the next episode, but this is as far as I got.

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**Chapter 4**

Angela put Mohinder up in a hotel that night. He was important to her and the new research based Company she wanted to create, since he was the only researcher she had. Elle just stayed quiet as Mohinder asked Angela what about her. Angela looked at her as though she found Elle distasteful and pulled Mohinder aside so that Elle could not hear the conversation. Elle did not need to hear it; she knew how it would go. That girl is trouble; you probably don't realize what she's done. Blah, blah, blah. And if Mohinder was convinced, that was fine. Elle wanted a place to stay and maybe a friend to care what happened to her, but if that was not going to be Mohinder, she could deal with it. After a couple minutes of back and forth with Angela, he came over to Elle and told her that she was also going to have a room.

The next day, Mohinder rented a car, or Angela did. Elle did not ask for the details; all she cared about was that he had a car. On the ride back to New York, Mohinder filled Elle in on some more of the details of what happened over the last few months. Primatech burned down. Pinehearst burned down. There really was nothing left of Elle's old life. No father, no Company, no home.

He only told her detached facts of what had been going on. He did not use a single personal pronoun. She knew he was there during the destruction of the formula, and she knew that he and others had kidnapped Bennet. But he left all of that out in his retelling. It would be so easy for Elle to just ask, "And at what point did you drug Noah Bennet?" But she decided not to push as a part of her new leaf she was trying to turn. Obviously, to some people, kidnapping was bad.

They also talked about Sylar a lot, enough that it made Elle uncomfortable. He was a part of everything that happened; he always had been. She had to hear the story of what happened the night Primatech burned down, secondhand because Mohinder was not there. And then he told her about what Sylar had down just the day before, prior to his death. Mohinder was not there for any of that either, but he had heard that story much more recently and was very familiar with the details. Elle forced herself not to react to anything, because Sylar was nothing to her except the serial killer who left her to die.

When they got to the loft, the only thing Elle wanted was to shower, but she felt that it was inappropriate to ask if she could. There was something about coming into a man's home and immediately taking off all her clothes that struck Elle as unseemly.

Now that she was back in New York, Elle needed to decide what came next. She realized then that, with both buildings burned down, she was literally wearing everything she owned. She had no other clothes, no identification, no idea how to get to her money. She supposed it all started with a birth certificate, which she probably could not get without a photo id. "I have to go to the police," she said out loud.

While Elle had been standing in the middle of the room, Mohinder had been surveying the apartment, checking to see if he had any food, making sure his computer still worked. He looked up at her now. "Why?"

"Because right now, I don't exist. I'll have to tell them that everything was destroyed in a fire." That was partly true, but she had actually lost her driver's license when she left her clothes behind at the Canfield house. She supposed there was a chance that Bennet had picked it up, but she did not want to ask him. "Tell them I was attacked, they can check with the Costa Verde police. So are you sure that it's over? Are you sure that I'm not a wanted fugitive?"

He went to turn off his computer. "Hold on, I'll go with you."

Elle assumed his non-response was an implied yes. "No, you don't have to. There a precinct house just a few blocks away. I can walk." She smoothed back her incredibly greasy, gross hair. "I'll be back."

At the police station, Elle made a decision to finally tell them more of what she remembered from the attack. She said she was with a man named Gabriel Gray, and she had never told the cops in California about him because she knew they would suspect him, and she thought he could not have possibly done it. But now she remembered what Gabriel had done. The detective came back after a few minutes and showed her a picture of a Queens man with the same name. She identified him as her attacker and asked if he had a record. No, but he was a wanted man. He killed his mother the year before. Elle pretended to be shocked and babbled about how she should have said something sooner, she didn't know. Of course, she had known; that was why she decided to give them his name, to sell the story. She gave them an address where she could be reached; she was staying with the friend who brought her back to New York, and she did not know the number. The police started the paperwork, said they would be in touch. No one mentioned Building 26 or the federal government.

The police told her it would be about a week before her renewed license would come in the mail. Elle went back to Mohinder to give him the timeline. He pointed out that getting her license was really only the first step to being able to live on her own. He offered to take the couch, and let her have the bed, but Elle knew that she had to decline. She was going to be there for a week, probably longer, and it was not fair for her to push him out of his bed. He had already done enough for her.

Elle spent the entire week in the loft, but after the first couple days, Mohinder went back to work as a cab driver. This struck Elle as strange because he had that promising position at the new Company. She chose not to ask him about that. It was not her place to question his life decisions. The Company was all she knew, but maybe it was not the right fit for everyone. Maybe he found it more fulfilling to drive a cab than to use the years' worth of education he had amassed. It was only a few days into her new attitude, and Elle was already finding it exhausting being so understanding.

The day her license came, Elle went straight to her bank, wearing some old clothes that Maya left behind. They were ill-fitting, but much nicer than her sweatpants. After she explained about the fire, they issued her a new bank card. Elle immediately went out to the ATM to check her balance. She did not want to admit to the bank employee that she had been spending money for months, prior to the attack, without ever paying attention to how much she had left. According to the bank's ATM, which was probably never wrong, Elle still had several thousand dollars, but it was less than she was hoping and certainly not enough to live on for very long. Elle withdrew some money to reimburse Mohinder, rounding the twelve dollars up to a hundred for food and inconvenience. Then she went shopping for clothes she could actually wear, with a lot of self restraint. As she paid Mohinder what she owed him, insisting that he take it all, she told him that she had one more thing to do before she started trying to find a job.

Elle felt a lot of dread at the idea of job hunting. She knew that she was not qualified for anything. She had no work experience that she could actually put down on an application and no education. She did not even have a high school diploma. She would work, even as a waitress, if she had to, but there was something she might be able to fall back on. Her father was a very wealthy man. She had been kicked out of the Company the same day as her father's death, the same hour even. She did not know what, if anything, she had inherited.

It was worth a try. Her father's lawyer was Arthur Petrelli, so she called his old law firm to inquire about the possibility of an inheritance under the long dead Bob Bishop's will. It seemed like a crazy question, like she was a distant relative coming out of nowhere to try to collect. She thought they were going to laugh at her and hang up, but instead she was transferred to a lawyer who said that he had been trying to find her for months, and could she come in as soon as possible? That sounded promising.

An hour later, sitting in the cushy office of a name partner, who was so eager to see her that she had not even needed an appointment, Elle was staring to feel that things were very promising. Then he proceeded to tell her in great detail about everything that she had _not_ inherited. It was not until the end of this litany that he explained to her that she had inherited under the residuary clause of her father's will as his sole heir. This meant that she received everything that he had not just told her about. When Elle said that it did not seem like there was much left, the attorney laughed. "Those were merely his business holdings, Miss Bishop. You've inherited all of his personal estate. I take it you and your father were not close."

Elle wanted to deny that, but she was not exactly sure how she could when it took her this long to inquire into his will. The attorney told her about the way that he had been safeguarding the estate in her absence, about how it was necessary to use funds from the estate to pay taxes on the house in Hartsdale. She stopped him there. "I own the house in Hartsdale?" The attorney confirmed that. Her father's private residence was a huge house a couple blocks from the facility where she grew up. She had lived there with him when they first moved to New York, but she was quickly moved to the facility, where they were better able to handle her "situation." That was the moment that Elle first understood the extent of her inheritance. The house alone had to be worth more than a million dollars. She asked about the loft in Manhattan, just to check, but that was owned by the Company, which meant Angela actually. She asked the lawyer what she had to do to make this official, and his explanation was so technical and boring, and he finally got to the part about how she was going to need to hire a lawyer. "Can't you just be my lawyer." He smiled a slighly predatory looking smile, and said, yes, he absolutely could, and that is a good idea, Miss Bishop, since he was very familiar with the estate.

Elle asked for a ballpark on the net worth the estate, and the number she got back was so much higher than she ever dreamed. "Residuary clause" had sounded like it was nothing, but in reality she had inherited most of the proceeds from her father's Midas touch. She could not believe that she had just spent the last week in secondhand clothes that did not even fit her.

They scheduled another meeting for the next afternoon, to give the attorney time to draw up some papers. Then Elle left, feeling like a great weight had been lifted off her shoulders. She went back to the loft, which suddenly seemed very depressing. There was a painting of a nuclear bomb on the floor. There was some sticky, crusty residue on the walls that she had not gotten around to asking about. There was a couch that was throwing her back out of alignment on a nightly basis. Oh, and right there was the place where Sylar tried to shoot her in what was only his first of many attempts on her life. And soon, she would be able to afford to leave this horrible, depressing place.

Mohinder walked through the door. He smiled when he saw her. "How did everything go today?"

She smiled back, and she was so close to telling him how really well things were turning out for her, for the first time in her life. She could not get the words out though. As soon as he knew that she had money, that she was back on her feet, he would want her to leave. "Good. I talked to a lawyer, and it looks like I might have inherited a little bit of money from my dad. So... that'll help."

--

--

**Author's Note:** I don't know how to make this clear in the text, but the lawyer is not going to screw her out of her father's money. He just wanted to be her lawyer because it allows him to retain a very wealthy client who is going to need some estate planning of her own soon.


	6. Chapter 5

**Author's Note**: So according to a Trust & Estates lawyer I consulted, it could take anywhere from three to eight years to probate a large estate. We're going to fudge those numbers a little. It's been about six months; there aren't going to be any contests to the will. (Not just for my convenience. No one would gain anything by contesting the will, except Elle, and she won't for other reasons. If you want a more full explanation, I will give you one.) It won't take nearly that long here. (And if it's been three years since Homecoming, then I don't really understand the Heroes timeline anymore anyway.)

–

–

**Chapter 5**

Mohinder was carrying a messenger bag, and he took it off now and set it by the door. "So I take it you did not try to find a job," he said in a teasing tone.

"Uh, no. I didn't." So far she had been honest with him. She was, however, aware that what she said was misleading, which would make it slightly manipulative. She could clarify what she meant by a little bit of money, or she could flat out lie to him. Since change was slow and could not be forced, she decided to do what came naturally. "I'll start looking soon. It's just that I don't know what kind of job I could even get. I mean, you're a doctor and you drive a cab."

The smile left his face. "In America. I wouldn't drive a cab in India."

Elle really hoped that he was not implying that he might go back to India. As she lied to be able to continue staying with him and panicked over the idea of him leaving the country, she realized that she was starting to think of Mohinder as something other than just someone providing her with shelter.

Before she could think of anything to say to that, Mohinder sighed. "Or maybe I would. I've burned a lot of bridges in the scientific community."

He came deeper into the loft, and Elle followed him, stretching her arms behind her back. "But don't you have the satisfaction of knowing you were right?"

He murmured a noncommittal assent, and Elle decided to push a little harder. "Okay, you can tell me that this is none of my business, but why do you drive a cab instead of just working for Angela?"

He was facing away from her. "It's complicated." He turned around to find that she was staring intently at him, waiting for more of an answer than that. "The Company, or whatever they are going to call it, is having trouble getting off the ground, because Bennet's not interested and... there's something going on with Nathan. But that's not really the reason." He sat down at the table. "I've been working with this research for a long time in a lot of different capacities, and I haven't helped anyone. Except Sylar, if you could call it that. And now I have superhuman strength." He held out his arms. "But how many people have I gotten killed?"

This was something Elle understood. She sat down across from him. "You can't blame yourself for what Sylar's done. By the time you met him, he was... there was no going back for him. He would have killed people with or without your help."

Mohinder looked doubtful. "I gave him the cure. He wouldn't have been able to do anything without that." His eyes wandered up to her forehead. "And because of that, Niki died. And I've killed others too, trying to find the formula, trying to..." He shook his head. "I've done enough harm."

"Again, it might not be my place, but... Driving a cab and wasting your brain, that doesn't make up for your mistakes. I don't know who you've killed, but you're still not helping anyone. You're just giving up." Now that she had said it, Elle knew that she had gone a little too far. She did not know anything about Mohinder's situation. "You know, I'm sorry. It's not my call."

"No, it's not." He sounded more pensive than angry. "I don't want to talk about it anymore."

He got up from the table, leaving Elle sitting alone. She knew that she had to respect his choice to cut off the conversation there. She probably had not handled the situation in the best way possible. At least, she was pretty sure that he was not going to India, so she would have plenty of time to smooth things over and try to say whatever it was that she should have said in the first place.

–

Mohinder left early the next day, as he usually did, but he did not come home at the usual time. Elle did not want to assume that he was avoiding her, but it seemed to be the case. After getting back from the lawyer's office, Elle spent most of the afternoon and evening thinking about how to explain to Mohinder what she really meant. She examined all her possible biases and preconceptions so that she could be really honest with him about where she was coming from and why she might have said the wrong thing.

She fell asleep before he came home and was awakened by the sound of the door opening. She sat up immediately. The longer she had waited, the more she had become paranoid that he was avoiding her and maybe that he hated her. "Look, what I--"

Mohinder interrupted her. "I didn't mean to wake you."

She pushed the blanket to the side and stood up. "When I said what I did yesterday, I think that I was just worried that--"

"You were right," he said simply. "It's not the research that hurts people; it's not the science. It's what we did with it, my father and I." He turned on the light and took a couple steps toward her. "And I know that I'm not helping anyone by driving a cab, but I also haven't gotten anyone killed recently. I'd rather be neutral than doing harm. But you're right. That means that I'm giving up on the research and the possibility that it could someday help someone."

He obviously did not hate her, and Elle decided to quash the apology for right then. "So where were you all night?"

He shrugged. "Working. I took a double because I just need some time to think." He seemed to still be thinking. He looked her in the eye and smiled. "I hate driving a cab. And you're going to hate being a waitress. This isn't who we are. I have a doctorate in genetics from a very reputable university. I was a professor in Madras, and now, I'm nothing. And you—You were..."

"An executioner, right?" Elle had been remembering everything about that mission she had worked with Mohinder, including the way he had referred to her when they first met. "Doesn't really qualify me for the service industry." She realized that maybe it was time now to explain herself to Mohinder. "And that's the thing; it was almost my job to hurt people. I was actually give orders to kill people sometimes, or set them up to be killed. So I don't know what it was like for you to know that you've hurt people. I only know what it's like for me, being raised to do it. My point is, if you want to give up, and if you want to be neutral, I shouldn't question that. We performed completely different roles in the Company."

"I was not calling you an executioner. I was just surprised that your father had given you a job like that. And I'm not in a place to judge you. We all make mistakes, Elle. When pushed, we are all capable of really dark things." He looked behind him, at the crusty residue on the wall, making Elle really wonder what kind of darkness was in his past. He took a step away from the wall, which brought him closer to her. "I didn't quite understand that back then."

In that moment, Elle felt that it was important for her to know if this was going anywhere, because it really felt like it was. She put her hand on his chest. "What did you do that was so bad?"

He shook his head, as though the memories still haunted him. "I hurt people," he said thickly.

He looked so wounded, so vulnerable, like he needed to be held. Elle traced her hand up around the back of his neck and pulled his head down to hers. It felt right to be kissing him, as though she was discovering that she still had something she thought was lost forever. She tried to figure out what that was all about while she pulled him over to the bed and pushed him onto his back. She really liked the expression on his face, the confusion mixing with desire. She climbed on top of him. As she kissed him again, he brought his hand up and tangled it in her hair. And then she remembered, and it suddenly felt very wrong to be kissing him right then. She pulled away. "I slept with Sylar."

"What?" Mohinder seemed surprised by this sudden shift in topic.

Elle pushed off his chest and rolled onto her back. "I had sex with Sylar the same day he..." She pointed to her forehead. "The last time I was with a man, he cut me and left me to die. And I had issues before that."

Mohinder stared up at the ceiling. "My last girlfriend can't even look at me because she thinks I'm a monster."

"Wow." Elle turned her head to look at him. "I still win though, right?"

"Oh, yes. I wasn't—She's right; I was a monster. I didn't mean to compare the two. I just..." He trailed off. There was a long awkward silence, and then at last, he said, "I'm going to leave--"

Elle sat up. "No, don't be ridiculous. This is your apartment. I'll leave."

He took hold of her arm to keep her from standing. "No, I mean that after what you said yesterday, I've decided to go back to Coyote Sands and go through what's left of my father's research. So I'm going to leave, but you're welcome to stay here while I'm gone."

Elle knew that Coyote Sands was out in the desert somewhere, which meant that it was nowhere near New York. That was almost as bad as him going back to India. "You know, my father used to talk about Coyote Sands sometimes. That's where he met Angela and Charles and Daniel. Mr. Linderman." It was awkward to call him by his first name, even though her father always had when he talked about those times. She knew what she wanted to say next, but she did not know how to segue. "I could help you go through the research. I mean I know I'm not a doctor or anything, but I am kind of familiar with the subject. And I've read your father's book, so..."

Mohinder sat up. "I don't think that I'm really going to need--"

She did not let him finish telling her that he did not need her. "I want to help people too. I don't like knowing that it was my job to hurt people. I don't want those to be the only accomplishments I have." That was true, but it felt like she was manipulating him still. "But that's only part of the reason. The main reason I want to go with you is that I don't want to be alone. There's nothing left for me here. And from what I know of Coyote Sands, it's a pretty secluded place. So you shouldn't be all alone there either; you'll go crazy."

From the look on his face, it appeared that there was some information that confirmed that as a possibility. "It is somewhat in isolation. But the last time we worked together, you got shot, and I killed Noah Bennet."

She was not sure how that was relevant. It was really unlikely that anything like that would happen again. "Yeah, good times."

He looked at her critically, like he was appraising her worth. "Still, I suppose that you are better than nothing."

Elle smiled at the backhanded compliment. "That's me, better than nothing." She patted his leg as she said this, and then they both looked down to see her hand on his thigh. Elle pulled away. "So you're not even going to ask about Sylar?"

"It's not really any of my business." There was a pause, during which Elle could tell that there was something else he wanted to say. "Although it does cast that day into a different light."

"Um, yeah, I was purposefully misleading so that you'd keep taking me with you." Now he had agreed to take her with him, even though her safety was no longer at issue, but she feared that, by being honest now, she had ruined any chance of anything happening between them in the future. "You have to understand that Sylar--"

"I do," he interrupted. "I understand about Sylar. He could be very charismatic when he wanted to. You're not the only person who got sucked in by him."

If that was how he wanted to think of it, Elle was not going to object. However, Mohinder did not have a full picture of her history with Sylar. It was not like when he used Mohinder or Maya. He was not even particularly charismatic that day, or at Pinehearst. And way back in the beginning, he was more bumbling than anything. When they were together, it was real. Or was it? He did try to kill her that day. She could try to use the eclipse to explain everything, but it did not quite fit. Maybe he was never who she thought he was. Maybe none of it was real. It took her breath away to think that maybe she had just been sucked in like every other one of his victims, that she had never meant anything more to him than anyone else did. Wasn't that how she explained him leaving her on the beach, that she was just nothing to him? She wished that she had not even brought him up again. There was just too much left uncertain.

Mohinder swept her bangs aside and tenderly touched her scar, tracing it from its start point at one temple all the way across her forehead to where it stopped five and a half inches later. "I guess it casts a lot of things into a different light."

No one had actually touched her forehead since the hospital, other than Elle herself. The last day she remember being in the hospital, it was still moderately painful when pressure was applied. But when Mohinder touched her now, with a slight amount of pressure, it did not hurt at all. Apparently, her stay in Washington had given the physical wounds time to heal completely. Now, she just needed to work on the other side of it. And she knew that alone in the desert with Mohinder, she could start to heal those emotional wounds too. She just needed to make sure that he knew where she was coming from. "God I feel like such a tease. I mean I..." She gestured awkwardly at the bed they were both sitting on. "I just want you to know that it wasn't you. It's Sylar. I just haven't quite gotten past what happened with him."

He put his hand on her arm. "That's completely understandable."

Elle smiled. "Only to someone so understanding." She got up from the bed. "Well you must be tired after working so many hours. I'll stop bothering you; we can talk about Coyote Sands in the morning. Or whenever you're not working." She walked backward toward the couch. "Good night."

"Good night." Mohinder scooted back in the bed, but then he seemed to realized that he was still dressed, wearing shoes. So he got up as well, to get ready for bed.

–


	7. Chapter 6

**Author's Note**: Happy Thanksgiving! (You know, if you're into that sort of thing.) So I needed to set a foundation for the MohElle relationship, but in some senses, the end of this chapter is where the story really begins.

–

–

**Chapter 6**

Mohinder and Elle did not discuss Coyote Sands any more in the morning, because as usual, he left the apartment before Elle was fully awake. While Mohinder quit his job for the third or fourth time, Elle met with her lawyer to make sure it would actually be okay for her to leave. She had not been thinking at all about her inheritance the night before, and when she said there was nothing for her in New York, she had meant it at the time.

The lawyer told her that it would be better if she stayed, but he could handle things without her for a few weeks. That was pretty much what Elle had expected. He did insist that he needed a way to contact her by phone, which prompted Elle to finally replace the cell phone she lost the day of the eclipse. She had tried calling her old phone a few days before, but all she got was a automated message telling her that her call could not be completed as dialed. She supposed that was a good thing.

The only other person Elle could of who might want to contact her was the Queens detective originally assigned to the Virginia Gray murder. He had interviewed her the first day she went to the NYPD and once again after that, and he told her that he would be in touch as soon as they had any information. Elle was not holding her breath on that, since she had seen her attacker burn up in a fire. She figured it was best to call the detective anyway, to make sure everything was set and that it would not cause any problems if she left the state. Of course, she was not the criminal here.

When Mohinder got home that afternoon, Elle was afraid that things would be awkward between them. And they kind of were; he avoided her eyes a little more than before. All things considered though, it was better than she was expecting. He just politely explained to her that he had started making plans for them to go to Arizona at the end of the week, which was how she finally found out where Coyote Sands was actually located. She told him that she had taken care of everything on her end and that she was ready to leave when he was.

The rest of the night was uneventful, but there were times when Mohinder would get a look on his face as though he wanted to say something or ask something, but then he would seem to change his mind. One time, he even opened his mouth and then closed it again with a shake of his head. Even though they were apparently pretending like the whole aborted seduction had never happened, Elle had a pretty good guess what he might be thinking, and for that reason, she did not prompt him to ask his questions. She imagined that eventually they would need to talk more about Sylar, but she was not ready for that yet.

–

Elle did not know what exactly she was expecting Coyote Sands to be like, but it was not like that. After flying into Phoenix and then driving for three hours, she finally saw the place where it all began, and she realized that she had all of the facts. She just had not put them together in a coherent way. As she looked at the rundown buildings and the sheer lack of anything else, she knew that it fit her father's description perfectly. She supposed that she had always subconsciously thought he was exaggerating, as parents are wont to do. He probably was, now that she thought about it. The buildings did not look like this forty some odd years before. "God, this is depressing," she muttered as she unbuckled her seatbelt.

Mohinder murmured in agreement. "We'll be staying in town. As far as I know, there is no electricity--"

For some reason, Elle did not want him to think that she was incapable of roughing it. She held up her hand, crackling with its own power. "That's okay. You brought a source with you."

"Or running water," he added.

She nodded, slightly relieved. "That I can't do. It's better to stay at a motel anyway. My lawyer wanted me to have access to a fax machine, just in case." She opened her car door. "So, where do we start?"

Mohinder followed her out of the car. "We start by finding out if there is any research left here."

Elle found it a little strange to think that he might have quit his job and flown all this way for nothing. She looked over at him. He was surveying the buildings with the same haunted expression he sometimes got in the loft. Elle knew generally what had happened there when her father was a teenager, but she did not know what Mohinder was seeing. "Mohinder?"

He kept staring out at the scene before him. "Maybe I shouldn't have come here. I try to tell myself that you're right, but--"

Elle did not cross the country just for Mohinder to get cold feet now. She took his hand and tried to pull him toward one of the buildings, probably the wrong one. "Of course, I'm right. Let's find the research."

Mohinder, being much stronger than her, did not budge and was actually holding her back. So Elle let go and waited for him to explain why she was wrong. "I don't trust myself. Do you know what happened here?"

She shrugged. "You mean the night of the freak storm when they shot everyone? Yeah, I heard some stories."

"I meant what my father did. The experiments? What do you know about those?"

Elle did not know anything about those. They had not been something her father was interested in talking about. "Bits and pieces. I don't think it was anything worse than what the Company... did." In that moment, a memory came back to her. Bennet telling her about experiments her father had done, Claude confirming the story. She still could not remember anything that happened then, but she realized the Company was capable of some really questionable experimentation, on children, on loved ones. She shook that off. "Is that what it is? I guess you must have done some experiments to try to complete the formula. Is that what you did that was so terrible?"

"That is part of it, but no." He turned to her, breaking out of his reverie. "What's the worst thing you ever did?"

Elle burst out laughing. "I have no idea." Something came to her, an answer to the question, but she was not going to give it to Mohinder. She was not going to bring up _him._ Especially because that would just lead to her having to tell Mohinder the what and the why, and she was not going to get into any of that right now. This, right here, was a place that Sylar had never touched, and she wanted to keep it that way for as long as possible. "I guess it all depends on your definitions."

Mohinder did not respond to that. "But I know how I'm going to make up for it," Elle said, bouncing a little on her heels. "All of it. I'm going to finally start helping the good guys. You're a good guy, Mohinder. Okay, so maybe you found a little darkness in your soul, but..." _We're all at war with ourselves. That's what it means to be human._ It would actually be appropriate for her to repeat those words right now, if it was not for the source. She was not going to let Sylar infect this the way he infected everything else. "But you're not a monster. And who was Maya to ever make you feel like that anyway? Look at what she did."

He shook his head. "No, she was right. You don't know what I've done."

"Do you really think you can shock me, Mohinder, after everything I've seen, everything I've done? I have looked into the face of pure evil, as it held me down and cut me open." God, he managed to slide in there anyway. "But I don't want to talk about him. And I don't want to be heavy-handed and manipulative talking about finding your salvation here. So all I will say is that I intend to find my salvation in this research, and I am not going to let you use the science for evil. Maybe all you ever really needed was a research assistant."

Mohinder looked doubtful that it would really be that simple, but he nodded and pointed to what appeared to be a bunker carved into the face of a hill. "That's where we'll start."

–

Elle and Mohinder fell into a routine. In the morning, they would eat the crappy, free breakfast provided by the motel, then they would drive into Coyote Sands to sift through the papers that had been horded by some crazy woman who lived there for a while. Midday, Elle would drive into town to pick up lunch and bring it back to Mohinder. At nightfall, they would head back, eat dinner at the one diner they had in that town, and retire to separate motel rooms. And in the morning, it would start again.

It did not really surprise Elle that after about a week, science became very boring. At first, watching the film reels had at least been a little fun, but there was never anything new. She had seen all of this before. The only time she really enjoyed herself was when Mohinder tried to teach her the basics of genetics, biology, or chemistry, but that was not so much about the science. It was more about how passionate he would get, the way his eyes would light up, and it was also about the fact that he would lean in close to her and often inadvertently brush her hand or arm with his.

By the time three weeks had passed, Elle was taking frequent breaks, not that there was much to do there. She told Mohinder that she was searching the buildings thoroughly to make sure that they were not missing any important pieces. Really, she was searching for anything more interesting, whether it was related to the research or not.

She passed by the old, rusted out swing set. Every time she saw it, she had the uncontrollable desire to swing on it. She could not remember the last time she had been on a swing. In a lot of ways, she had been forced to grow up early. But the fact that two of the three were broken kept her from trying out the third, until today. This swing beckoned to her, and she put her foot on it to test it for weaknesses. It did not break or give any under the weight. After another couple minutes of deliberation, she sat down gingerly. It felt sturdy enough.

She backed herself up until she was standing on her tiptoes and pushed off. The swing completed one arc, but when it hit the point where forward motion stopped and it tried to jerk back, one of the chains broke off from the set. As she fell, Elle tried to catch herself, but she ended up on her back anyway.

She had not been very high up in the air, so she was not really hurt at all, but she needed to take a second to collect herself. During that time, Mohinder came running up. That meant that he saw it, and that made the whole thing that much more embarrassing. He stood over her, looking down. "Are you all right? You could have a concussion."

Elle took the hand he was offering and let him help her to her feet. "I'm fine. I just feel stupid for even trying that."

"No," Mohinder said. "It's not stupid. It's human nature."

Elle had a feeling that what he was really saying was that it was human nature to do stupid things. In his mind, this probably all had to do with the scientific method and trial and error. "I guess."

Mohinder stepped behind her and started to brush the red dirt off her back with quick sweeping motions. That seemed to Elle like it was not entirely necessary. The days had started to blur together, but she figured it must have been nearly a month since the night she kissed him, which was something they never talked about. She turned around slowly to face him, thinking maybe it was time for a little more trial and error. She stared up at him with intentionally wide eyes, not saying anything because she had been the last to speak anyway.

Mohinder cleared his throat awkwardly. He turned his head a little. "Well, if you're--"

Elle placed her hands on both sides of his head and turned it back so that he was facing her. She brought Sylar to her mind. Normally, she spent her time actively trying not to think about him, but he was a part of this trial. So she thought about that night on the beach when he kissed her and tried to kill her, because that was what she needed to get past. Then she brought Mohinder's head down to hers. Mohinder, who would never hurt her. Mohinder, who was so much better at resisting his dark side than Sylar had ever been. When her lips met his, Mohinder was the only man she was seeing.

Elle knew the moment that he placed his hands on her shoulders that this was not going to work out the way she wanted. For a couple seconds, he used his grip to hold her close, but then he pushed her away, just as she knew that he was going to do. He held her at arms length, and then he let go of her shoulders. He shook his head, mixed feelings showing on his face. "I don't think this is a good idea. You're still--"

She interrupted him, mostly because talking about it was not going to get her where she wanted to go. She could tell that they were not going to end up there just yet anyway, but she did not want to give him the opportunity to talk himself out of it. "Right, I'm still..." She gestured up at her head. "Even though it's been months. I understand," she said with a resolute nod. "Let's just get back to work."

–

Sylar woke up in an ill-fitting body, next to a dark-haired woman he did not recognize. He tried to raise his hand to look at it, but he could not make this body do anything. After a few seconds, the body stretched without any direction from Sylar. It leaned over and kissed the smiling brunette, and then it got out of bed. The body propelled along without Sylar really wanting it too. It was a terrible feeling to be so out of control. Sylar could not understand what was happening until the body took him into the bathroom and he looked at the face in the mirror. Matt Parkman's face.


	8. Chapter 7

**Author's Note:** I've decided that I needed to write/post something, anything at this point. The problem is I've kind of lost my inspiration to write for Heroes. I can't even bring myself to watch the show since it came back. (As in, I'm still working on "Let it Bleed.") But still, I've been working really hard to get something done here. This was originally only the first half of the chapter, but I don't know how much longer it's going to take me to work out the kinks in the next part, so I'm posting it now, and splitting the chapter into two parts. So, yeah, it's pretty short.

–

–

**Chapter 7**

Eventually, Elle did not have any choice but to work on the research. She had combed through all the other buildings, and there was nothing left to distract her from her real reason for being there. Originally, her work had mostly consisted of compiling the data in a more comprehensive way and plugging numbers into formulas. Now, they were at a point where Mohinder was forced to go through the files and films he had been avoiding, and her new job was to go through them first, as a sort of screening process.

Mohinder did not come right out and say that he was worried about what he might find. He told her that he just wanted her to look through to see if those particular pages and reels had anything of note in them. Since she was not a scientist in any way, and thus not qualified to determine what was of note, Elle was able to understand that what he really wanted was to be shielded from anything his father had done that was truly horrible. And since that was the first thing here for which she was actually qualified, Elle started to enjoy her work a little more. There was still very little she had not seen before. As a young teen with nothing else to do, she had spent a lot of time on the containment levels, fascinated by all the things people were capable of.

In her several weeks at Coyote Sands, Elle had never once come across the name Robert, Bob, or Bobby Bishop in any of the files, and there were no films about him. A couple times, though, she caught glimpses of her impossibly young father in the background. She had spent a lot of time grappling with what her father had supposedly done to her, but when she stopped the reel to freeze on the one really good shot of his face, none of that seemed to matter.

Mohinder came in to find her standing in front of the screen, staring at her father's face. Elle could sense his presence in the room, but she did not turn around. She wanted to ask Mohinder what he felt every time his own father came on screen, but she knew that she shouldn't. His father was a sore spot that was rubbed raw every day in this place. "That's my dad," she said, just in case Mohinder did not recognize him. She kept her eyes on the screen as she said the next part. "I know that he wasn't the best father in the world. He was distant and disapproving. But he was the only one I had, and he really wasn't that horrible, in hindsight. And I know that he really did love me, in his own way."

Elle heard Mohinder sigh behind her. She knew that she had not exactly been subtle with that. She just figured that since the research had started to stagnate, she should try to find another way to help people, or at least one person in particular. She finally turned to look at Mohinder. "Did you really come here just for the research or was part of it to feel closer to your father? Because if it was, I get that."

Mohinder looked up at the screen, and even though Chandra Suresh was not on it, Elle could tell that he was thinking about her question. He sat down in a chair. "I don't know. I needed to find a way to reconcile what I am and what I've done with... with who I thought I was."

That reminded Elle of other questions she had. "And just out of curiosity, how are you going to reconcile it, if you never talk about what you've done?"

He considered this, but in the end, Mohinder had the exact reaction Elle expected; he ignored her. "So, do you have anything new for me?"

Elle took this to mean that he was commandeering the projector. That was fine with her since it was time for her to head into town for lunch anyway. She nodded her head at the stack of three reels sitting in front of him. "Those were interesting." She took down the one with her father and put it back in its canister. "This one, not so much," she said wiping her hands on her jeans. "What do you want for lunch?"

He told her that he just wanted "the usual." Elle went out to the rental car with a strange feeling that progress had been made. It was true that he still was not talking about what he was thinking, but she had come to accept that as just his way. She was not sure if it was just his nature to keep things inside or if it was something about her in particular, but she did not let it bother her. When she thought about it, they had still not discussed either of the two kisses they shared, both initiated by her. It had been another couple weeks since that second one. Maybe it was time to work on that project again.

–

At first, Sylar would fade in and out of Parkman's mind. He would get maybe a half hour of being able to see Parkman's life and feel Parkman's movements, and then he would lose time. Over the next week or so, Sylar worked on figuring out what was happening to him and gaining control of his new environment. With time, he was able to recapture vague memories of Parkman forcing him out of his own body, but he had no recollection of what had happened to that body.

Eventually, Sylar was able to make Parkman aware of his presence. When it started, he still could not control the body, but he had learned to manipulate the other man's mind, and it was only a matter of time at that point. A week more, and it finally happened. He was able to push Parkman completely out of the body for a short stretch of time, long enough to make a point.

–

–

**Author's Note:** First off, I don't intend to abandon this story. That said, if I do end up abandoning it, I promise to post a notice on my profile page and personally message everyone who has Hurts Me Too on alert, kind of like an anti-alert. (And that is not just me trying to boost that number, which right now is very manageable.)


	9. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

Because Elle had been so forward the last couple times she tried to initiate something with Mohinder, she really wanted this time to be more indirect. She spent her afternoon trying to figure out how to be accidentally seductive, and she managed to come up with a plan. It was not the most subtle plan, but it contained plausible deniability.

The motel they were staying in was old school, with real locks on the doors and real keys to go in them. That was convenient for Elle. Whereas she was supposed to be washing up for dinner, she had really just unbuttoned her jeans so that they were slung low on her hip. Then she stood in front of the room's full length mirror and waited for Mohinder to knock on the door, which he did within a couple minutes. "Come in," she said, trying to sound distracted and absentminded.

He came in to find her examining the gunshot wound on her upper left thigh. He cleared his throat audibly, and Elle looked up at him, as though she had just realized that he was there. "Sometimes I forget that I'm disfigured now," she said by way of explanation. She pulled up her pants but did not button them. "I swear I used to be pretty." She turned back to the mirror and placed her hand over her forehead. "I'm going to have to start meeting men like this."

She waited a little while for Mohinder to respond, but he did not say anything. She dropped her hand with a heavy sigh. "It's no wonder you don't find me attractive."

He objected to this. "I didn't say that."

She poked and prodded at the long scar, looking intently at it. "You didn't have to."

Mohinder opened his mouth to say something, but then he stopped himself. He was, in a lot of ways, the most frustrating man she had ever met. But she had to pretend not to notice to keep her deniability about what she was really doing here. She was just going to have to keep going down this path and hope that it would lead somewhere. She lifted up the sleeve covering her right arm. "And then of course, there's this," she said, looking at the evidence of the other time Bennet shot her.

"When you were with Sylar..." Mohinder did not finish that thought, but at least he had finally said something.

On some level, Elle had always known that Sylar was the huge elephant in the room. This whole thing would have happened so much sooner if she had never told Mohinder that she'd had sex with the other man. Still, she chose to pretend to misinterpret his words. "When I was with him, I wasn't disfigured. My beauty had not yet been marred."

Something about this response emboldened him to continue. "But you must have known who he was by then, what he had done. Why would you..." He trailed off in another unasked question.

Fine, if they had to talk about it, she would talk about it. She sat down on the bed, seriously considering his question. She knew that she was not really going to tell him the truth, but she was sure that she could find some version of it that would work. "It's his ability, you know. It comes with a hunger, a need for more abilities. He could probably fight it. He just doesn't want to. But it's not really who he is; it's just his ability, and during the eclipse, he was different. Whatever it was that allowed him to suck you in, and Maya and your father... He had all the redeeming qualities and none of the homicidal ones." It was getting difficult for her to talk about it. She knew that she had to distance herself from what she had felt back then. "Beyond that, I don't know why I did it. That's just the kind of bad choice I'm known for making. And, really, on a list of all the terrible things I've done, sleeping with Sylar would only be a footnote."

"So you regret it now?" he asked genuinely, as though he had trouble believing that.

"Of course I regret it." She said this very convincingly, but she was not really so sure. As she thought about it, no, regret was not the right word. It was more like she wished they could have stayed in that moment, in that house even, forever. She knew that the evil came from inside of him, but it felt to her that it was always the outside world that tore them apart. When they were alone, everything was fine. Of course, they were alone on the beach when he tried to kill her, so the theory broke down there. It did not matter what she felt then anyway. Sylar was dead, so she could just skip over all the second guessing and the what ifs. And because of that one simple fact, she knew exactly what she had to say to Mohinder. "Why do you think I'm here? I have a scar on my forehead to remind me every day that I did not live a good life. I was reckless, I got involved with the man who killed my father, and I almost got myself killed too. I'm trying to turn my life around. So I don't want to talk about when I was with Sylar, because that's not who I am anymore."

Mohinder shook his head. "But it is. It's admirable that you want to turn your life around, but, understanding what I now do about your relationship with your father, I don't believe that you've really changed at all. You're still the same damaged young woman who needs someone else's approval in order to know how to live. Right now that's me because I took you in, and you don't have anywhere else to go." With a small smile, he added. "I don't really believe that you came all this way because you were passionate about the research."

Elle had to admit to herself that maybe he was making some good points. She was serious about making an effort to change her sociopathic ways, but the things she said about finding redemption in the research had really just been to push Mohinder in the right direction. It had sounded good though. "Okay," she said slowly. "So, yeah, I'm scared of the idea of really being on my own. And yeah, I've had people to tell me what to do my whole life. Maybe I do just cling to whatever comes along, and maybe that's part of what happened that day with Sylar. And maybe that's what I'm doing now. But is that really so bad?"

Mohinder seemed to think that was a complicated question. "It's not _bad_; it's just--"

Elle did not want to hear it. "And maybe I haven't really changed yet, but I'm trying. It takes time, and I think you can help me."

He nodded. "Yes, I can help you. I don't have any problem with helping you. It's this--" He gestured at her body. "--that's the problem. It's the fact that you keep trying to push something that isn't real to keep me around. And you don't have to do that, Elle, because I'm not going anywhere."

Now they were getting somewhere. They were finally really talking about them and what their relationship might be. Elle got to her feet, catching her jeans to keep them from falling down. "What makes you think this isn't real?"

Mohinder shrugged. He appeared to be at a loss for how to answer that. "It's just that you are dealing with some difficult developments, and it feel like that is the driving force here. It—it feels forced."

Elle buttoned her jeans so that she would not have to continue holding them up throughout this conversation. "So that's what this is about? That's what's been holding you back? This isn't about Sylar or the scar?"

Mohinder shook his head with a sigh. "It's about you. Sylar, the scar, those are just pieces of the puzzle. I just think that Sylar might be a bigger piece than you're saying."

Elle was a little stunned by this. She had worked so hard to minimize Sylar's meaning to her. She could not imagine where she could have possibly made a mistake. "He's not."

Mohinder looked her in the eye. "Why didn't he kill you?"

That really threw Elle. "He did. Or at least, he thought he did. He thought I was dead when he walked away; I'm sure of it."

"That just does not sound like the kind of mistake he would make. It's like Claire said, if he wanted you dead, you would be."

Thoughts ran through Elle's head, jumbling together. She knew what he was implying, that Sylar had left her alive because of some feelings he had for her. Elle had decided long before, back in the hospital, that it was dangerous for her to think that way. Of course, now that Sylar was gone, it was not really an issue anymore either way. She gathered together some response to give Mohinder. "Well, I'm not going to say that I've never asked myself that same question. I had a lot of time to think about it when I was recovering. Why didn't he kill me? But the thing is, if you twist it around a little, that question becomes, why did he spare me? And that's when it becomes clear. He didn't spare me. He didn't need my ability, and that's why he didn't go down to the brain. But when he walked away, I was unconscious, dying, and he knew that. So he didn't wait around to make sure, and that might seem sloppy, and you and Claire might not understand it. But as far as he was concerned, he killed me. And that's the only answer that makes sense."

Elle watched as Mohinder concentrated on what she had said, pulling it apart in his mind. He was looking for something in her explanation, and she was afraid that he was not going to find it. She was afraid that they would just continue on this merry-go-round, never moving forward.

It finally got to a point where she could not take it anymore. She moved closer to Mohinder, so that they were only a few inches apart, and put her hands on the side of his face to force him to look at her. "Why does he matter?" she asked. "I don't really understand why we're even talking about him. When I was with Sylar, it was one day, one time. We've already been... whatever we are for two months. So why don't we just let him be dead and focus on figuring out what we are?" She dropped her hands from his face, confident that he would not look away. "Because I think we might be more than just colleagues."

Mohinder looked down at her like he did not know what to make of her. After a second, he tentatively reached out to touch her right shoulder, pushing her hair out of the way. "Yes, we're probably a little bit more than that." He moved his hand down to feel the gunshot wound on her arm and stared at the spot even though it was covered by her sleeve. His lips were parted, and he was thinking again. Elle did not know whether any good could come from him thinking. He tightened his grip a little on her arm and turned his eyes back to meet hers.

They stood like that in silence for about a minute. Elle told herself the same thing she had been telling herself all night, maybe all month. Mohinder was almost there; he just needed a little push. She took hold of his shirt. "You know, you and I are the only people in this room right now. All that matters right now is what we feel." She pushed herself up on her tiptoes. "And I feel like there's something happening between us."

Mohinder let go of her arm and began to stroke her hair. "I feel... I feel that we should take this slowly."

Elle wanted to ask him what he thought they had been doing. By Elle's standards, this whole thing had been painfully slow. But just the fact that he was acknowledging there was a "this" to take slowly was enough for Elle. She smoothed his shirt against his chest. "Okay. You can start by buying me dinner." She headed for the sink. "I just need a minute to wash up."

His voice came from behind her. "Which you were supposed to have already done."

She turned back to see a slight smile on his face. He was teasing her, which was a very good sign. She decided to answer that simply. "Yep."

–

–

**Author's Note:** I'm not entirely happy with the way I'm doing my chapter breaks in this story, but at least I'm writing again. And to the readers who are sticking with me through this flakiness, thank you for that.


	10. Chapter 9

**Author's Note:** My goal of getting a new chapter up within a month of the last one = FAIL. (You know, if you were wondering.)

–

–

**Chapter 9 **

After a very nice meal at a fairly low-class diner, Mohinder gave Elle a quick kiss on the lips and retired to his own room. This was pretty much what she expected him to do. She knew that his concept of taking it slow would not include them spending the night together. Still, it was definitely, officially their first date, and even going to bed alone, Elle was excited about where things might be heading.

She woke up to the sound of a phone ringing. She got calls so rarely that it took her a second to realize that it was her own cell phone. As she rolled over to fish it out of her purse, she noted that the clock on the radio read 6:44. Elle was not surprised to find that the call was coming from a New York area code. Assuming it was her lawyer, she groggily answered.

"Miss Bishop, this is Detective Holloway from the NYPD. We spoke a couple months ago."

Elle had forgotten all about her trip to police station. "Yeah, how can I help you?"

"I just wanted to let you know that there has been a development in your case. Gabriel Gray was picked up in Baltimore last night, but unfortunately he managed to escape from custody."

Elle sat up more fully. The detective clearly had more than he wanted to say about that, but Elle was more interested in what he had already said. "I'm sorry. What was that?"

Holloway sighed. "He escaped, but this is still--"

That was not the part that was bothering her. "No. The thing about having him. You—you found Gabriel Gray?"

"No, not us. The Baltimore P.D., but--"

"He was in Baltimore?" Elle did not care if she sounded crazy. She was the traumatized victim after all, and she was definitely feeling a little traumatized at the moment. "You're sure it was really him?"

"Miss Bishop." The detective hesitated. "Are you in that area right now? Because if you feel like you need protection, the local police can--"

"No, I'm... I'm way out west. I just... I can't believe that after all this time, he just showed up again." That was kind of true. Still, she needed to tie it back to the story of normalcy. "It's been, what, two years since he killed his mother? And you haven't found him in all that time. And then he just appears in Baltimore? I don't know what to make of that. You're sure it was him?"

"Yes. Fingerprints, photo identifications, it all matched. I can appreciate how difficult it must be for you to know that the man who attacked you is still out there, but I assure you that we are doing everything in our power to bring him in."

Difficult for her know that he was still out there. That was an understatement. There were explanations for this. She knew there were any number of ways that Gabriel Gray and his fingerprints could be in Baltimore without Sylar actually being alive. Sylar never would have been taken into custody in the first place, right? "I know. Um, thank you for keeping me updated."

After hanging up with Detective Holloway, Elle slumped over and put her head in her hands. It was not possible. She watched him burn. Bennet said that—Bennet. That was her first mistake, trusting anything Bennet said. But if Sylar were still around, surely that would have come up before now. There would be bodies and sightings by people who actually knew who he was. Maybe no one would bother to tell her, but Elle expected that someone would have said something to Mohinder.

Oh, god, Mohinder. She looked at the door. Let's say Elle assumed it was actually Sylar in Baltimore the night before; he could not have worse timing. What was it she had said? Something about letting Sylar be dead, about how he shouldn't matter anymore? Did Mohinder ever tell her why Sylar mattered to him so much in the first place? If Sylar was alive, did Mohinder know? Elle rejected that thought quickly. Mohinder was not the one who was willing to lie and manipulate to get them into a relationship. That would be her.

The radio next to her spontaneously started playing the middle of an annoying pop song. It was seven, time to get up. Elle was still holding her cell phone in her hand. She had decisions to make. Who, if anyone, was she going to tell about this new development? Maybe she should just forget about it. It was not possible for him to be alive. _No_, a voice said in her head, _if you remember, it was not possible for him to die_. For the first time, it occurred to Elle that Baltimore was actually very close to his final resting place outside Washington D.C. Maybe spontaneous regeneration truly meant that they never really died. Was that really any more impossible that anything else she had seen? Maybe no one had lied, and she was actually the first person to get the news. And maybe Sylar wasn't her problem anymore, she thought, disingenuously. Or, as she insisted on being more honest, maybe she was lying to herself because she had a good thing going here.

Showering and getting dressed, Elle could not make a decision, but the second she saw Mohinder, the old mantra slid back into her head. It was not possible. Baltimore P.D. made a mistake. There was no point in upsetting Mohinder until they knew more. So she went to Coyote Sands with him, focused on her work, and tried to pretend nothing had happened that morning. At one point Mohinder asked her if anything was wrong. She smiled sweetly and lied as convincingly as she knew how.

Back at the motel that night, Mohinder discovered that he had several missed calls from Matt in L.A. It seemed urgent, like something big might be going on. Elle pretended not to have any reaction to that.

–

Parkman was panicking, which Sylar liked. He called and called Mohinder Suresh with no answer. Then he came up with a brilliant plan. Drinking was the answer. Somehow, he thought that if he got blackout drunk, Sylar would just go away. It turned out, not so much.

For someone whose superpower was to read and manipulate minds, Sylar found Parkman incredibly easy to control. The second he lost consciousness, Sylar slipped easily into the driver's seat, for good this time.

He excused himself from Parkman's wife and boss and just reveled in the feeling of having control once more. He would come up with something to tell Janice, or not. It did not really matter anymore.

Matt's phone rang from the dresser. Sylar checked the display and found that Mohinder was finally returning Parkman's calls. _Too late_, Sylar thought with a smile. He knew that he had to answer. He did not want to give anyone in the evolved human community reason to think something might be wrong with Parkman. "Hey, thanks for getting back to me."

"I'm sorry it took so long." That voice, that stupid accent, brought back a flood of memories for Sylar. "I didn't have any reception where I was. What's wrong?"

As far as Sylar could remember, those phone messages had been vague. "Oh, it was... It turned out to be nothing." Sylar worked hard to capture the cadence of Parkman's voice. "I was having a problem with something, but I managed to work it out on my own. I'm sorry for alarming you."

"No, it's okay. So how has everything been with you?"

Sylar just wanted to get off the phone, but he realized that Mohinder was not going to make it easy. He and Parkamn were actually friends. Sylar looked at the manifestation of Parkman that only he could see and wondered what the odds were that Mohinder would know anything about the whereabouts of Sylar's body. The two of them had been close once; they had even lived together for a while. They were raising a— A use for Mohinder came to him. "Good, but there is something I wanted to talk to you about." Mohinder might not know anything, but Sylar knew of someone who would, someone who could find anybody anywhere. "With everything getting back to normal, I've been thinking it might be time to bring Molly back."

"No," Parkman said. "You leave her out of this."

Sylar ignored that. He could tell that Parkman was trying to sound threatening, but the attempt was laughable. There was nothing Parkman could do at this point. From the other end of the line, Mohinder said, "I'm not so sure about that. Normal is a temporary concept anymore. I think it might be safer to leave her where she is"

The problem was Sylar did not know where that was. "Maybe you could come to L.A., meet Janice, meet my son. And we can talk about it more fully. Because this is decision we both need to make." The last thing Sylar wanted was to have to spend time with Mohinder Suresh, but if it would help him get his body back, it was a small sacrifice. Then he could kill them all, slowly, painfully, cathartically.

"Well, we are in Arizona right now. I suppose I could make it over there."

Sylar pondered that "we" as he heard a female voice say something about meaning to go back to California. Did Mohinder have a woman in his life? Did Sylar know that? He supposed it might have been Maya, although it did not really sound like her. Mohinder must have shielded the speaker, because after that, the conversation was too garbled for Sylar to understand. A minute later, Mohinder spoke into the phone again. "It turns out Elle need to go to Costa Verde anyway."

Sylar was too surprised to worry about how Parkman would have responded to that. "Did you say Elle? Bishop?" The second after he asked, he realized that Elle was probably a common name.

He was not expecting Mohinder's answer. "Oh, yes, I'm sorry. I'm in Arizona with Elle Bishop. Is it okay if I bring her with me?"

Elle Bishop was supposed to be dead. Sylar wanted so much to ask about how it was that she was not dead, but it did not seem appropriate right then. "Yeah, absolutely. Bring her along."

–


	11. Chapter 10

**Author's Note:** I'm going to stop apologizing for taking so long with these, but it doesn't mean that I don't feel bad. It's just that I don't want to rush myself and post clearly subpar material, because that would be worse in my eyes.

–

–

**Chapter 10**

There was nothing, literally nothing for Sylar to do all day but wait impatiently for Mohinder and Elle to arrive, which he knew probably would not happen until late afternoon. Actually he did have that kid to take care of. Sylar was willing to do the bare minimum there, but only because he needed to keep this Parkman thing up long enough to find his body. Spooning out baby food was not enough to distract him from his thoughts. The priority, obviously, was finding his body. The only reason he invited Mohinder to L.A. was to find out where Molly was. The fact that Elle Bishop was alive and on her way was a sidebar to that.

Parkman was always there, off somewhere to the side, complaining. Sylar could see now how annoying that must have been when he was doing it, but that had been the whole point. Parkman knew how to make this stop, but he was not going to tell Sylar what he wanted to know. Sylar realized that he might have made a few tactical errors there. Parkman was well aware that as soon as Sylar had his body back, he would want that wonderful mind control ability. It would be different with Mohinder and Molly. In this lovable loser's body, they would trust him completely.

Parkman could tell that he was on edge. He kept making comments about it, questioning it. It was all very manageable until late afternoon rolled around and Sylar opened the door to his new guests. Parkman took one look at Elle's forehead and said, "Oh."

Sylar had not been expecting the scar. It had not even occurred to him that it was a possibility. People with wounds like that didn't get scars. They died or they healed, but they never had scars. Not like that, not angry red gashes cutting across three-fourths of the forehead. When he heard that she was alive, he had assumed that she had been healed. He did not know who would do it or why, but he just assumed that was the only answer. But if she had that scar, that meant that she never died, and that had never occurred to him.

Elle's hand moved self-consciously to that very scar. "You'd think I'd get used to the staring."

He knew he was staring, but what else was he supposed to do? He wanted to say, _I already killed you_. Only two people had ever come back. Peter was a surprise; Claire he had known would. But Elle... It was just amazing that she was standing there, alive, through sheer willpower to live apparently. He shook his head. "Sorry. It's just, wow. That's a—that's a scar."

Parkman looked from Sylar to Elle and back again. He was drawing conclusions, but he did not share them.

Sylar held out his hand to her. "I'm not sure if we've actually met before. I'm Matt." She shook his hand with a tight smile, and Sylar flashed back to the memory of lacing his fingers in hers right before he killed her. Tried to kill her. Usually the memory of a kill was fairly satisfying. This one was... something other than that.

Sylar turned to Mohinder. He was the important person here, not Elle. She was an oddity, a mystery, but she was not going to help him find his body. Sylar held out his hand to the scientist he had always hated. "And Mohinder. It's good to see you again."

Mohinder returned the sentiment. Off to the side, Parkman nodded at Elle. "So what went wrong there?"

Sylar ignored him. He was too busy trying to decide how to approach the subject of the sleeping arrangements. There was only one guest room with one bed. Should he assume that they would be sharing that one room? Since the only other option was the couch and they had been staying together in Arizona, it seemed like a pretty safe assumption. Sylar found that he did not like the implication of that, but he just reminded himself that these people were only a means to an end. "Let me show you the guest room."

Elle adjusted her bag on her shoulder and followed him. Mohinder stayed in the entry way with his own luggage. Sylar stopped to wait for him, but he did not move. "Elle can have the guest room, and I'll take the couch this time."

That meant that they were not sleeping together, which almost made Sylar smile. Not that it mattered, not that _she_ mattered at all to him. He had wanted her out of his life, and the sooner that happened, the better. It just made his skin crawl to think about her and Mohinder sharing a bed under his roof.

He watched Elle's reaction to what Mohinder had said. She rolled her eyes and sighed. "Okay," she said with a nod, as though she could see that it would be futile to argue.

Parkman was watching this with some interest as well. He seemed to be really curious about Elle and how she fit into all this, but so far it did not seem like he had figured anything out. And as long as Sylar could keep himself out of the conversation, he never would.

That turned out to be more difficult than he expected because as soon as he and Elle were in the guest room, she said. "You know, we have met. I was at Sylar's funeral thing." She shrugged. "Whatever it was, when they burned the body."

That was the first actual piece of information Sylar had gotten. They burned his body. There was no time to think about what that might mean just then, but he would be able to work out the possibilities later. Through his peripheral vision, he could see that Parkman looked slightly worried, and that was a good thing. So now he just had to deal with his little mistake. "Right. I was thinking I'd seen you somewhere. I just couldn't place it."

She smiled. "Yeah, well, I don't think anyone actually talked to me that night, so..." She trailed off, and her smile faltered before falling off her face completely. "Do you think that... that Sylar..." She shook her head as though to get rid of her question. Then she put her bag on the bed. "We should go join Mohinder."

She made a slightly awkward exit. Sylar knew that she was worried about the mind reading ability, which he was still completely unable to use. He really wanted to know what she was going to ask about him, what she thought Parkman could possibly know. Instead, he went out to the living room and put on the best Parkman act he could. Not long after that, Janice got home from the office, and they all had dinner together. Sylar knew better to rush the conversation about Molly. They would talk about her in the morning when everyone was well rested, and then Sylar would finally be done with these people.

That night, Sylar got up from his bed. He had decided that it was best to limit the amount of time he spent unconscious. He did not want to give Parkman too many chances to take back control, especially not now that he was getting closer to finding out what he wanted to know. As he rose from bed, he noted that Parkman was not around. Probably his consciousness needed to rest. That was an added bonus of waking; Sylar could finally have a few moments to himself.

With Mohinder on the couch, there were only a few places Sylar could go. He headed for the kitchen and was surprised to find Elle in there. It ruled out the prospect of solitude, but it would give him a chance to talk to this anomaly away from Parkman's nosiness. "Couldn't sleep?"

She was sitting at the table drinking a glass of water. "No, I—I had a headache."

He was glad that she had given him an opening to ask more about what he had done to her. "Do you get those because of..." He pointed to her head. "...Sylar?"

"No, not really. Not often." She paused. "I never really thought about it like that. I mean everyone gets headaches sometimes, but maybe it is a little..." She chuckled at her long-windedness "Yeah, maybe."

He sat down across from her. "Do you mind if I ask about that? I mean, you're alive. That's pretty remarkable. How did you survive?" If he was crossing a line, he did not really care.

Elle sighed with annoyance. "There's really nothing remarkable about it. I just did. I was lucky because he didn't have to expose the brain, so he thought this would be enough. And then someone found me quickly enough and called an ambulance quickly enough that they were able to fix me. I still spent a month in a coma though." She narrowed her eyes at him. "Did Mohinder put you up to this? Because I'm going to tell you the same thing I told him, there is no doubt in my mind that Sylar was really trying to kill me that day."

That was a fascinating response to an innocent question. She was very defensive about the whole incident. He had gotten the information he wanted, that she lived because he did not do a good enough job killing her, but he wanted to know more now. "I wasn't questioning that. And Mohinder didn't tell me anything." The implication of what she was saying was that Mohinder had questioned it, and that might mean that Mohinder knew about them. Sylar decided not to explore that just then. "It's just that I started out in all of this investigating Sylar, so I've seen a lot of people that he's sliced up like that. But I've never seen someone live through it without having a special knack for healing."

Elle felt a little badly about getting so defensive with Matt. After all, he had opened his home to her, barely knowing her. They probably had never even spoken before that day. And of course he would be interested in how she survived. It was an interesting matter. "Right. Apparently, I do have a little bit of a knack for it though. I let Peter and Claire think that I stopped Sylar by shocking him, but really, it was just luck."

Matt nodded thoughtfully. "Okay, now you can tell me if I'm overstepping," he said with an affable smile. "But what was with all that hostility before? Do people routinely question whether Sylar was trying to kill you?"

Elle was wary of his mind reading. It seemed to her that it would be difficult to keep any secrets from this man. "Don't you actually make it like a daily habit to overstep? I should really just be happy that you're asking instead of... reading." She did not give him time to respond to that because she knew that she was reverting back to slight hostility. "Sylar and I had a complicated working relationship. In the sense that we actually had a working relationship. And my miraculous recovery has made some people question my version of events."

"Which is what?" He must have seen her hesitation because he added. "Hey, I'm pretty good at telling when people are lying. I might be able to clear this whole thing up for you."

The problem with that was Elle wanted to lie to him. What happened on the beach was actually kind of private, and she realized now that she had never really gone into the specifics with anyone. "We were in the middle of working a job, and... we were on a beach, and, in a surprise move, he killed me."

Elle was satisfied with that. It was all true, but not too revealing. The look on Parkman's face suggested that he was able to figure out that there was a lot more to it. He just kept nodding, like he was figuring it all out. There was nothing Elle could do about that; she did not know how to shut down her brain.

Matt seemed to be debating whether or not to say what was on his mind. Finally, he spoke. "Does it ever bother you that Mohinder can't seem to get a woman except by sifting through Sylar's cast-offs?"

That did not really sound as mean as it could have. It sounded more like he was concerned about his friend and not thinking about the effect it might have on Elle. It was still an incredibly awkward thing to say. "What?"

Matt seemed to realize what he had said. "Oh, I didn't mean that you-"

"No, you're right." She sounded a little shrill, but she did not care. "He did cast me off, leave me to rot on that beach. At the very least, quite a definitive, one-sided break-up. It's just... I don't really like to be compared to her. She did a number on Mohinder, made him think that he's a horrible person. Even after what she did, even after being with Sylar, she treated Mohinder like he was the monster. And yet, he still can't stop thinking about her. I'm never going to... I'm not even sure that's what this is. But—but with Sylar, you can't even compare Maya to me. They were never really... He was just using her. I was..." Elle had the presence of mind to know that it was not the right move to defend her relationship with Sylar. "I just think I knew him a lot better than she did."

Sylar had mostly said what he did just to see how she would react and to undermine whatever she had going on with Mohinder. He was pleased with her response. "So you're more offended about being compared to her on Sylar's end than Mohinder's?" He knew that was not exactly what she had said, but he wanted to know.

Elle rubbed the back of her neck. "Mohinder had a real relationship with Maya. There's nothing I can do about that. So fine, it invites comparison. But she never even knew who Sylar really was." She hesitated. "I don't know how much you know about my past, and I don't know what you're going to tell Mohinder, but I like to think that I meant quite a bit more to Sylar than that twit ever did. Of course, we both ended up the same way," she said with a bitter laugh. "Dead by his hand."

She had definitely, unequivocally meant more to him than Maya. Maya had just been a means to an end, barely worth remembering after it was over. Yeah, maybe he could have had some fun with her, but that did not have that much to do with her. Elle, on the other hand? Everything about her was specific to her. He hated her, but she was really one of the more important people in his life. He wanted to perpetuate this notion that she came out ahead of Maya for Sylar, but behind Maya for Mohinder. He wanted to cause problems for those two. The trouble with that was he was not supposed to be someone with very much insight into Sylar's feelings. "But unlike Maya, he didn't actually kill you. That has to mean something."

Elle got a far off look on her face. "It means... It means that he already had my power, and I got lucky."

"But why did he already have your power?" Sylar was pushing it with that question. He had no idea how many people knew about that, and in fact, he hoped it was relatively few. He really hoped at this point it was just Elle. But Matt had an ability that allowed him to know thing that he shouldn't, so Sylar figured it would be okay.

Elle looked down at her hands. "I wasn't aware that you knew about that. I guess that's a good point. I told Mohinder that it was just one day. That I made a mistake because he was different during the eclipse, but that is a complete lie. It started long before the eclipse. Or something did. It was a confusing time, and I don't know what it was. How can I explain it to Mohinder when I don't even know. So just please don't tell him any of this. It shouldn't matter anymore anyway; Sylar's dead."

Sylar was having so much fun with this, that he had forgotten all about the "funeral." Of course, that would mean that she thought he was dead. And he needed to consider the sobering possibility that his body might be gone. He had healed from a fire before, but surely they would have watched for that. He tried to think about how he could probe about his death without tipping her off that he was not who he said he was.

Elle was having deep thoughts of her own. "You were there, right?"

He had no idea what she was talking about. "Where?"

"In the room, when Sylar died. It was just you and Bennet and Angela, right?"

If she said so. "Yeah."

She was looking down at her hands again, as though she did not want to make eye contact. "Do you, um, do you think there's any possibility he might still be alive."

He thought it was definitely possible. "Why do you ask?"

"Oh, not because I'm... I don't _want_..." Elle shook her head to gather her thoughts. "I got a phone call from someone in Baltimore. Or, no, he was in New York. A detective, and he said that the police in Baltimore..." She trailed off, almost like she was afraid to say it out loud.

Sylar waited impatiently for her to continue. If it had anything to do with him being alive, he wanted to know what it was. Finally, it became clear that she needed a little coaxing. "What did he say, Elle?"

She swallowed hard. "He said the police in Baltimore picked up Gabriel Gray a couple days ago, and I just want to know if it's possible."

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End file.
